Centre College Senior Art Exhibition 2009: Exquisite Corpse
An Appetite for Architecture
I have always had an appetite for creating art. I remember sitting outside one of the eighteen houses of my childhood and sketching its likeness with a No. 2 pencil and a legal pad. My father is a housing contractor and consequently, I had many a house to study. Besides an appreciation for architecture, my father and I also share the same appetite for working with our hands and analyzing a problem by working it out visually. If I ask my father for directions I leave the house with a map, hand drawn on that same yellow paper from my youth. My work reflects these qualities, which I have inherited from him. You will see architectural landscapes, each of which began as a detailed line drawing or study on paper which allowed me to understand the perspective and details.
At Centre, my appetite for art was expanded from a love of creating it to an appreciation for it. In taking art history classes I was exposed to the art world. Like many art students, I am drawn to the brilliant colors and visible brush strokes of the Impressionists. Scenes like Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night are dominated by intense blues and yellows—colors that are prominent in many of my own pieces. I find it fascinating how the Impressionists played up color in their environments and I try to emulate that in my own work. I work from photographs which I then edit to enhance the natural color. This is most evident in The Barber Shop. The colors are saturated so that the orange hues become prominent; blacks become deep blues and reds become hot pink.
In choosing a subject for my senior show, I knew I wanted to combine my love for architecture and my appreciation for the Impressionistic style but found it difficult to adapt the clean lines and structured perspective of a building to the painterly style I admire. My biggest inspiration is Edward Hopper, specifically his painting Early Sunday Morning. This is an image of a storefront, viewed directly from the front so there is little more than a flat façade of the building. The light and colors arestrong, but the street and sidewalk are devoid of life. As the title says, it is Sunday morning and the shops are closed, giving the viewer a feeling of loneliness.
From Hopper, I gather my subject matter, my intense colors and strong light sources. There is little sign of life in my pictures and I have been told that it is like the town is holding its breath. In some pieces however; there are other elements such as the American flag, traffic or dynamic skies that add movement. Expressive brushwork also adds energy to the scenes. I have seen this not only in works by masters like Titian and Rembrandt, but also in the works of modern painters like Ben Aronson. This is most evident in my image, The Hub. As one of my first paintings in the series, the image of a simple, large building offered the challenge of a mass of brick and concrete. Once I faced the problem of applying the painterly style to a geometric scene, I learned to use a ruler to play the clean lines of the building with vigorous brush strokes to add texture and interest.
One of the works that may stand out as different from the others is St. Something. This was one of the last pieces I did. The colors are more subdued and it may not seem to fit in any small town in America. In fact, the photograph I used is from a trip to Rome I took with my mom the year before I entered Centre. It was this trip that truly sparked my interest in studying art and so I have hung this image at the center of my wall, surrounding it with those of towns in central Kentucky. St. Something offers a glimpse of my past and my future. This image offered perspective so exaggerated that I was forced to stand on a chair with a piece of string to work out the details at this scale. The personal connection I have with this image has made it one of the most enjoyable to work on.
I believe that when most people think of a landscape, they think scenic vistas of rolling hills or snapshots of the perfect lighting on a building at sunset. Truthfully, it was a challenge for me not to use these kinds of images; however, I admire artists that can find beauty in the most unlikely of places. As a viewer, studying the works of Hopper, Aronson or even George Nick, I wonder why they chose such ordinary subjects and what made them see their potential to be extraordinary.
I have always had an appetite for creating art. I remember sitting outside one of the eighteen houses of my childhood and sketching its likeness with a No. 2 pencil and a legal pad. My father is a housing contractor and consequently, I had many a house to study. Besides an appreciation for architecture, my father and I also share the same appetite for working with our hands and analyzing a problem by working it out visually. If I ask my father for directions I leave the house with a map, hand drawn on that same yellow paper from my youth. My work reflects these qualities, which I have inherited from him. You will see architectural landscapes, each of which began as a detailed line drawing or study on paper which allowed me to understand the perspective and details.
At Centre, my appetite for art was expanded from a love of creating it to an appreciation for it. In taking art history classes I was exposed to the art world. Like many art students, I am drawn to the brilliant colors and visible brush strokes of the Impressionists. Scenes like Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night are dominated by intense blues and yellows—colors that are prominent in many of my own pieces. I find it fascinating how the Impressionists played up color in their environments and I try to emulate that in my own work. I work from photographs which I then edit to enhance the natural color. This is most evident in The Barber Shop. The colors are saturated so that the orange hues become prominent; blacks become deep blues and reds become hot pink.
In choosing a subject for my senior show, I knew I wanted to combine my love for architecture and my appreciation for the Impressionistic style but found it difficult to adapt the clean lines and structured perspective of a building to the painterly style I admire. My biggest inspiration is Edward Hopper, specifically his painting Early Sunday Morning. This is an image of a storefront, viewed directly from the front so there is little more than a flat façade of the building. The light and colors arestrong, but the street and sidewalk are devoid of life. As the title says, it is Sunday morning and the shops are closed, giving the viewer a feeling of loneliness.
From Hopper, I gather my subject matter, my intense colors and strong light sources. There is little sign of life in my pictures and I have been told that it is like the town is holding its breath. In some pieces however; there are other elements such as the American flag, traffic or dynamic skies that add movement. Expressive brushwork also adds energy to the scenes. I have seen this not only in works by masters like Titian and Rembrandt, but also in the works of modern painters like Ben Aronson. This is most evident in my image, The Hub. As one of my first paintings in the series, the image of a simple, large building offered the challenge of a mass of brick and concrete. Once I faced the problem of applying the painterly style to a geometric scene, I learned to use a ruler to play the clean lines of the building with vigorous brush strokes to add texture and interest.
One of the works that may stand out as different from the others is St. Something. This was one of the last pieces I did. The colors are more subdued and it may not seem to fit in any small town in America. In fact, the photograph I used is from a trip to Rome I took with my mom the year before I entered Centre. It was this trip that truly sparked my interest in studying art and so I have hung this image at the center of my wall, surrounding it with those of towns in central Kentucky. St. Something offers a glimpse of my past and my future. This image offered perspective so exaggerated that I was forced to stand on a chair with a piece of string to work out the details at this scale. The personal connection I have with this image has made it one of the most enjoyable to work on.
I believe that when most people think of a landscape, they think scenic vistas of rolling hills or snapshots of the perfect lighting on a building at sunset. Truthfully, it was a challenge for me not to use these kinds of images; however, I admire artists that can find beauty in the most unlikely of places. As a viewer, studying the works of Hopper, Aronson or even George Nick, I wonder why they chose such ordinary subjects and what made them see their potential to be extraordinary.